Eminent Chancellor, on behalf of the University Council and Senate, I present to you Henry Llewellyn Fowler.
Harry Fowler was borr in Prince Edward Island into a family which moved to Alberta while he was in his teens. After an education which led him to the threshold of a career in teaching, Mr. Fowler turned instead to banking, from which he departed in 1922 to enter a farm implement and oil agency in Wilcox, Saskatchewan. The depression of the thirties inevitably turned the attention of farmers to reducing costs by cooperative efforts and Harry Fowler, almost equally inevitably, became the manager of an oil distribution co-op at Wilcox.
Thereafter the name of Harry Fowler became inseparably linked to the development of the co-operative movement in Saskatchewan. He played a role in organizing the world’s first cooperative oil refinery; it came into production in 1935, and remains the only refinery of any size owned entirely by Canadians. In addition, Harry Fowler was active in the organization of fourteen more co-ops, one of the original incorporators of eleven, a director of sixteen, president of eleven, and manager of five. The co-ops that have felt his influence have included several of the largest in the province, and his co-op career culminated in his election as president of Federated Co-operatives Limited, from which post he retired in 1963.
Harry Fowler’s career epitomizes many of the most striking and admirable characteristics of life in western Canada. In addition to his extraordinarily active career in the cooperative movement, he has been a leading member of his church, of the fraternal organizations he has belonged to, and of several educational institutions including the Board of Governors of this University. From 1952 to 1956 Mr. Fowler was a member of the Royal Commission on Agriculture and Rural Life. He is, in short, one of this province’s best known and most distinguished citizens.
Eminent Chancellor, I present to you Harry Fowler, and ask that you will confer on him the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.